Once a mother let her child slip from her arms to the pavement.
She gave a shriek.
"My good woman," said Andrew, testily, "what difference can one infant in the world more or less make ?" We come now to an eccentricity, engendered of loneliness, that altered the whole course of his life.

Want had battered down his door.

Truth had been evolved from despair.

He was at last to have a flash into salvation.
To give an object to his walks abroad he would fasten upon a wayfarer and follow him till he ran him to his destination.

Chance led to his selecting one quarry rather than another.